Chinese technology giant Alibaba is an e-retailer known by most as China’s version of Amazon, but it’s much more than that. As TNW puts it:
Alibaba is like Amazon, Microsoft, a video game company, and a nation-wide healthcare network all rolled into one with every branch being fed solutions from the company’s world-class AI department.
The company’s most recent useful development is an AI that can identify the new coronavirus (called SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, or 2019-nCoV) within seconds via computerized tomography scans – and with 96% accuracy. It is much faster at diagnosing the infection than humans and can, therefore, be used to alleviate pressure on hospitals.
Alibaba’s research institute, Damo Academy, developed the diagnosis algorithm for the AI system. The researchers trained it with over 5,000 confirmed cases worth of sample data. The algorithm also includes recently published research and even the latest treatment guidelines.
The result is a system that can identify differences in CT scans between patients with ordinary viral pneumonia versus those infected with the novel coronavirus within 20 seconds. To compare, humans take around 15 minutes to diagnose the illness because sometimes there can be over 300 images to evaluate.
The Alibaba AI was first introduced in the new Qiboshan Hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan province, and has since been adopted by at least 100 more healthcare facilities in the regions of Guangdong, Hubei, and Anhui – all the locations that have seen the highest number of infections.
Alibaba’s AI is not the only diagnostic tool capable of spotting the coronavirus with acute accuracy. Ping An, a rival healthcare organization, has also developed a similar system. Geoff Kau, the company’s co-president, released a statement saying:
Since its launch, the smart image-reading system has provided services to more than 1,500 medical institutions. More than 5,000 patients have received smart image-reading services for free. The system can generate smart analysis results in around 15 seconds, with an accuracy rate above 90%.
The more solutions, the merrier!
